Forty-five years after leaving my hometown of Mobile for college, I still find it astounding that I never lived there again. My grand life plan got waylaid by career (sportswriting) and spouse (Yankee). I soothe my yearning for home by telling myself that the Mobile I miss exists only between my ears. Time has a way of moving things along. I tell myself that, and yet on every return trip, I walk into the peanut shop and see where time has been told to take a hike.
The official name is A&M Peanut Shop, yet four generations of Mobilians have simply called the narrow Dauphin Street storefront “the peanut shop.” Since 1947, when the store opened as one of hundreds of Planters retail stores across the country, the
